Throne Speech from King Charles becomes a rallying cry for Carney’s Liberals

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If you thought the moment of crisis had subsided, the King was here to tell you it is still on.

The Carney government’s Speech from the Throne wasn’t mainly about outlining a governing agenda. It was about pointing to a moment of danger and transformation.

It wasn’t just a bunch of symbols to tell Donald Trump that Canada is taken. The King read a speech about the dangerous moment Canada faces in the world and how it now will undergo its greatest economic transformation since the Second World War.

Opinion polls suggest the feeling of crisis that propelled Mark Carney to election victory a month ago is already subsiding. Perhaps U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats of trade war, and his desire to make Canada the 51st state, are now seen as less of an immediate danger.

But the Prime Minister needs to muster a sense of national purpose to do all the big things he says he plans to do.

All of the imagery of the Throne Speech, starting with King Charles III reading it, was mustered to underline the moment.

The King was clearly invited as a statement that Canada is not the U.S., a message both for Mr. Trump and Canadians – evoking images of wartime sacrifice at Juno Beach and Vimy Ridge, and Canada’s British, French and Indigenous roots. And repeatedly asserting Canada’s sovereignty.

The fact the King was in Canada to do that was a sign of unusual times. Much of the speech was about Canada facing a watershed moment.

He remarked that when his mother, Queen Elizabeth, first opened a session of Canada’s Parliament in 1957, “the Second World War remained a fresh, painful memory” and “the Cold War was intensifying.”

And “today, Canada faces another critical moment.”

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There were passages about the worries many Canadians feel about the “drastically changing world around them” and an assertion that the times also provide “an opportunity for Canada to embark on the largest transformation of its economy since the Second World War.”

Wow. If change is unsettling – as His Majesty told us – then the parts of the speech that Mr. Carney’s government drafted told us that we should prepare for the country to be unsettled

But that potential disruption has been the basis for Mr. Carney’s election and his tenure so far. And his whole agenda.

The speech promised to break down internal trade barriers to create one Canadian economy, which requires co-operation from provincial governments that might suffer their own political consequences.

It promoted the need to build “projects of national significance,” to approve them quickly, to strip out layers of federal and provincial reviews – something that would require a level of sustained practical federal-provincial co-operation this country has rarely seen.

Perhaps it should be no surprise that the most pointed opposition objection to the speech came from Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet. He said it represented a massive centralizing agenda, with Mr. Carney acting as the country’s chief executive and expecting everyone else to implement his decisions. The Bloc had no interest in a call to unite behind a national purpose.

Whether Mr. Carney can get others to respond remains an open question. The hair-on-fire terror about Mr. Trump’s trade war appears to be subsiding in Canada.

A Nanos Research poll released this week found just 16 per cent rated Mr. Trump and U.S. relations as the top issue of concern – roughly half as many as a month ago. (The poll surveyed 1,088 Canadians in weekly tracking ending May 23.)

That’s not the same galvanizing force behind Mr. Carney’s agenda. And in truth, he has barely set the outlines for that agenda. Tuesday’s Throne Speech provided almost no new elements. It’s often the details that raise resistance.

Mr. Carney has now spent five months trying to build up demand for his agenda. Fulfilling the demand will be harder.

There was an assertion that Canada is ready to build a coalition of like-minded countries, helping to unite the leftovers of the free world the U.S. no longer wants to lead. But that’s the kind of promise of global leadership that has gone unfulfilled before.

For now, Mr. Carney has a window when the feeling of national urgency could give him licence do big things. The King was invited to buttress Canadian sovereignty, but the government’s message was about the moment.